Twenty-Three Days After the End of the World
by xXxVioletSkyxXx
Summary: It was November 22 and 23 days and 42 minutes since it had happened. Since they had died and Voldemort had died and Harry orphaned. 23 days and 4 hours, tally marks etched into his mind 23 days since he's been in Azkaban, 3 weeks, 2 days and seventeen hours since he's been alone.


Sirius' eyes had long since sunk, his face grew hallowed creases and wrinkled places. He had aged a decade in a matter of minutes, and it wasn't surprising, really, considering the circumstances.  
I would have done the same, so would you. If you had a love that deep, that selfless, well, needless to say, he was lucky he didn't drop dead from the pain of it.  
But Sirius was strong. He would endure, he would stay strong. Even if staying strong meant screaming to prove that he was alive.  
That was okay too.  
Because he was alive. It was November 22 and twenty-three days and forty-two minutes since it had happened. Since they had died and Voldemort had died and Harry orphaned.  
Twenty-three days. He had tally marks etched into his mind's eye, carved them into the stone with his fingernails to free the images. But it was still there, twenty-three days it said. Twenty-three days and four hours. Twenty-three days since he's been in Azkaban, three weeks and two days he's been alone.  
And he counted impulsively, keeping the count, the insistent tick-tock of the clock echoing in his head, bringing him closer and closer to madness.  
It wouldn't be long now.  
Twenty-three days and five hours.  
Just sitting, just staring. Listening to his deranged cousin scream from somewhere above him and hoping that he wasn't going to lose it too.  
But anybody would go mad in Azkaban. It was impossible not to, not with the Dementors and his worst memories as his only company. Not with the memory of Lily dead and James dead and Harry alone and with Lily's awful sister. This reality was too painful to bear, but there was no rest in sleep. Because sleep was the birthplace of monsters and with the hell he lived through, he didn't need to be reminded of circumstance in his subconscious as well.  
Remus was alone too.  
And today, the 22nd of November was the first day of the full moon- the first of many he'd go through alone.  
Sirius slumped off the cot and onto the damp stone, feeling the cold seep into his bones, faster and faster as the minutes past. For decades it seemed he sat and waited, hands tugging incessantly at hair and skin and sores, pulling and yanking anything that moved. He swiped his hand over his mouth and wasn't surprised to see blood and saliva staining his sleeve.  
Twenty-three days now; an insurmountable amount of time that escalated every moment. Twenty-three days since Hallowe'en, since the silence and the screams, the-  
He was back at Hogwarts on the worst day of his life, the day he sat triumphant as Snape's mind churned thinking about what was really going on at the Shrieking Shack. He shrugged nonchalantly when Snape asked, and gave nothing away. Just planting an idea, but he told no one. Not even James and Sirius told him everything. And Snape came, at the tail end of Remus' transformation, Snape snuck into the Shrieking Shack to see the monster held within. He had a Muggle camera, and Sirius watched in sick fascination when Moony noticed the stranger in his solitude.  
And he pounced, claws extended, mouth open, and Sirius watched as a dog when Snape ran in abject horror, dropping his camera and running as fast as he could away from that place.  
Snape would've died if not for James.  
He would've been eaten by his best friend and no one would ever have known what had happened.  
But the look James gave him, was the farthest from laughing, it wasn't pity or even anger; it was hatred. Pure horror of what Sirius had done.  
He had sentenced Snape to death, and he would've died too had James not stepped in.  
And his best friend hated him. Loathed him. This was one prank too far, James had said. This isn't funny anymore, Snape knows now. Knows that he's a werewolf; all of his suspicions are confirmed. You've put a target on your best friend's back, he could be expelled because of you!  
And Sirius had laughed, he was fifteen and reckless and his brother had just become a Death Eater. He had nothing to lose and somehow still lost it all.  
He lost James' pity that night. Lost his trust for the rest of the year, and from that day onwards, his best friend never looked at him in quite the same way.  
Sirius shook in his fear, and tears streaked down his face as his body shook from withdrawal. He'd give anything for a cigarette, for a beer, for a lapse in judgment and silence of thought. A moment, even just a moment, when he could forget it all. He'd give his life for silence from the nightmares of his memory and the horror of his thoughts.  
He was sixteen and standing on the back porch of Grimmauld Place. His family had just denounced him and his mother threatened to blast his name off of the family tree. His brother was a Death Eater, gone to dark magic and the darkness of black magic. His father was proud and Sirius had starved himself thinking about it, drunk and high most of the time to escape the madness of his upside-down life. He was as good as an orphan and it hurt more than it should've to acknowledge his solitude. He was disinherited, had nothing but a Muggle leather jacket, and old broom and three cigarettes to his name. He slung his pride over his shoulder and jumped out the window into oblivion.  
He was fourteen and being torn apart by nightmares, shaking and crying in the night. He was caught under a curse and felt the excruciating pain of an Unforgivable on his psyche. Forced on a suicide mission that killed him in more ways than one. He was still a child, still twenty-one and invincible, still throwing curses behind his back as he ran for his life.  
Every night he stands on the pavement of Godric's Hollow.  
Every night he shakes in the wind and feels the terror running through his body when he found them there, eyes open but no life within. Every night he stands over their dead bodies and trips down the stairs, feels the splintering of his life expand from this place through his entire body. The broken glass works its way to his throat and he vomits blood and bile on the tile floor, and staggers out of that house, his wand falling from his grasp.  
He stands on the porch, and rapt determination works through his body like wildfire, his nerves shot, his eyes beady and poised and his legs beat steady and sure towards Peter, towards the man who betrayed his friends and deserves worse than death for what he did.  
He slips on the cobbles, and slices his knee on the gravel, his hands raw with stones and mud. He staggers up and away, wipes the blood away as he runs, further and further, then up, up and away; he Disapparates.  
But it doesn't work, not without a wand, not without preparation. He has nowhere to go. The crack of Apparation sounds like a whip, more than one in the silence, and suddenly Sirius is surrounded. Aurors shout and Sirius ducks as a spell snaps over his head. The wind tears at his clothes and Sirius stands unarmed, laughing in his madness, scared beyond belief but incapable of movement.  
Lily is dead, Sirius. James is dead. Twenty-one and invincible, incapable of death, a three-time survivor of the death sentence, he'd been on death row for three years and now he was gone.  
What can you do now, Sirius? Peter is a murderer, a betrayer, the scum of the earth, showing his true colours even after all this time.  
"I trusted you!" Sirius shouts, "They trusted you, Peter!"  
But it doesn't matter, Peter is dead, Lily and James are dead. Everywhere you turn are the dead and the dying and not for the first time, you wish you were dead too.  
Silence consumes you after all that noise, the spray of the sea, the speed of flight shakes the blood and dust and ashes from your body as you fly over the ocean. On your way to Azkaban, but you were mad long before that day, my friend.  
Part of you had died when he had, and the sanity you lost that day would never return.  
Sirius wrenched himself from his thoughts, and tore at the stone, his fingers bloody, the broken skin filled with the ashes and dust and mud you thought you left behind.  
Twelve more years, Sirius.  
That's how long you'll sit in dust and ashes waiting for your Lord to come.  
But nobody's coming for you, little man. Killer, murderer, betrayer of your friends.  
Time muddles perspective, and as the years string in front of you, even you were convinced that you had killed them. James and Lily, your best friends in the world, the only family you had left. Dead and gone because of you.  
You had killed them, Sirius, death for 30 pieces of silver.


End file.
